Editorial: Don't adopt this bill

'Conscience' bills a license to discriminate

They are euphemistically called "conscience" bills, but the legislation headed for votes in the state Legislature this week amount to state-sanctioned discrimination and the unwarranted disqualification of potential adoptive parents. We urge our representatives to stand against them.

A House committee could vote as early as today on legislation that would allow faith-based agencies to refuse to participate in adoptions that violate their beliefs.

The bills would prohibit the state or a local government from denying a child-placing agency a grant or contract if it objects to facilitating, referring or participating in an adoption that violates the agency's written religious or moral convictions or policies. Nor could the government consider the agency's objections in funding or contracting considerations.

The bills follow a wave of similar measures in state legislatures nationwide, many in response to health care coverage requirements in the Affordable Care Act.

Conscience clauses have their origin in the principle of conscientious objection to participation in war, and federal law continues to grant military exemptions based on religion.

Such bills have proliferated, however, in the decades since Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in 1973, and have moved steadily into areas that pit individual religious autonomy against the public interest.

A bill that would let health workers and business object to providing contraception or other medical services on moral grounds has been pending on the Senate floor for five months.

Proponents of the adoption legislation say it would protect the religious freedom and preemptively protects faith-based adoption agencies should Michigan legalize gay marriage or civil unions.

We are unequivocal in our belief that each individual and institution has the right to practice its faith, but we are just as adamant that organizations performing quasi-governmental functions with public dollars must do so in a non-discriminatory fashion.

Denying adoptive parents based on sexual orientation, for example, is clearly discriminatory and should not be tolerated.

All children need loving homes, and we don't believe that religious prejudice - or any other kind of discrimination - should stand in the way of that.

These bills would do just that. Lawmakers would be wise to vote them down.